The Cream in the Middle

This post was first published in my blog at my workplace under the title “Treats and the Middle Class”. Please excuse the bad language.

Economists like to classify all folks working in the IT/ITES industry as “middle class”. While a single term does simplify the formulation of economic theories, it is very far from real life. Take a look around you. The guy sitting on your right might not be sending a single penny home while the girl sitting on your left might be trying to save every penny to support her retired parents (sometimes sick), siblings (probably studying at some place) and pay back the educational loan that the family had taken for her studies while you yourself might be somewhere in between the two on this plane.

My friend Abhishek invented four levels of middle class – lower section of the lower middle class, upper section of the lower middle class, lower section of the upper middle class and the upper section of the upper middle class to be used in our friend circle. We have come up with rough definitions for each of the four classes (some of them are quite funny). Anyway, the intention of this post is not to discuss about these four levels.

The issue is about treats. It is the normal custom in this company to take the team out for a treat at CCD/La Terrace on birthdays. It is quite possible that a particular person might not be in a financial position to afford such a treat. What does the person do in such a case? While it might be easy to say that a treat is not mandatory and it up to each and every person to decide, it might be very difficult. After all, my observations have led me to conclude that the basis of treats (and of gift giving) is reciprocity. If one begs to differ, how can one really say so?

Another argument might be that those who can afford, can give treats and those who cannot can simply choose to ignore. Wouldn’t that make the ones who don’t, stand out in the group? Yet another argument would be that treats can be assumed to be a fixed annual expense and they should be factored into the annual budget, irrespective of one’s place in the four levels. Is that a valid argument? Two thousand rupees (or even less) might not mean anything to a person in the upper middle class but might be a huge sum for a person in the upper or lower sections of the lower middle class.

Yet another method would be to pool money by making a small contribution every month and then use it to treat everybody in the team. This is again just provides an illusion of not spending while over the year, the contributions might add to a significant amount.

Let’s admit it. Team mates are not friends. For friends, the 3 rupee chai and 5 rupee samosa at the tea shop outside the campus is as good as a 45 rupee some-CCD-coffee-drink and a 40 rupee Death by Chocolate. For friends, it is irrelevant that you take him to Leela Palace for your birthday while he cooks rice, dal and gobi at home for his birthday. But what about the enforced closeness of your project? Is it really necessary?

What are your thoughts on this?

PS: Please don’t give me “If we don’t treat, CCD guys, coffee growers in Coorg yeda yeda will go hungry” economics. This post is not about economics.

Thanks Karuna for the title.

Dear Americans, Quit Whining

The following is a comment I made on Slashdot:

That is a pretty accurate description, especially

Our educational system itself is a joke.

If you were painting or washing cars (the euphemism I use for outsourced IT work) and some guy in a poor country across the world offers to do the same for half or even quarter the rate, capitalism cannot afford to employ you. Americans have two options – either whine yourself into irrelevance or pull yourself by your bootstraps, retrain and do things higher up on the value scale like designing new cars or even inventing new automobile technology. American universities like MIT are already working towards this and moving to newer paradigms in engineering education. Take a look at Geeks and Chiefs: Engineering Education at MIT.

And yes, not everyone in India wants to paint cars forever. They are very eager to design and invent new stuff too. Americans have had a head start and now a good opportunity. History will record whether they were smart enough to capitalise it.

Chess: Mathematicians vs. Truck Drivers

The following is an extract from the article Why Computers May Never Think Like People by Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus. First published in the MIT Technology Review,  I found the essay in the book Knowledge Management Tools,  a collection of essays edited by Rudy Ruggles.

One of us, Stuart, knows all too well the difference between expert and merely competent chess players; he is stuck at the competent level. He took up chess as an outlet for his analytical talent in mathematics, and most of the other players on his college team were also mathematicians. At some point, a few of his team mates who were not mathematicians began to play fast five- or ten-minute games of chess, and also began eagerly to reply the great games of the grand masters. But Stuart and his mathematical colleagues resisted because fast chess didn’t give them the time to figure out what to do. They also felt that they could learn nothing from the grandmaster games, since the record of those games seldom if ever provided specific rules and principles.

Some of his teammates who played fast chess and studied grand-master games absorbed a great deal of concrete experience and went on to become chess masters. Yet Stuart and his mathematical friends never got beyond the competent level. Students of math may predominate among chess enthusiasts, but a truck driver is as likely as a mathematician to be among the world’s best players. Stuart says that he is glad that his analytical approach to chess stymied his progress because it helped him to see that there is more to skill than reasoning.

God and the Multiverse

I just read a wonderful article in SCIAM India by Michael Shermer. It was the 100th edition of his column “Skeptic”. Quoting from his column,

There is one mystery I will concede that science may not be able to answer, and that is the question of what existed before our universe began. One answer is the multiverse. According to the theory, multiple universes each had their own genesis, and some of these universes gave birth (perhaps through collapsing black holes) to baby universes, one of which was ours. There is no positive evidence for this conjecture, but neither is there positive evidence for the traditional answer to the question—God. And in both cases, we are left with the reductio ad absurdum question of what came before the multiverse or God. If God is defined as that which does not need to be created, then why can’t the universe (or multiverse) be defined as that which does not need to be created?

This reminded me about a conversation that I was part of recently (date 06-May-2009 in my log book). Here is the conversation produced verbatim:

“One small thought struck me which I wanted to share with you. During our conversation about multiverse, I said, ‘I can’t imagine how anybody can come up with a proof for multiverse.’ to which you replied, ‘Somebody will. Don’t underestimate the human mind.’“

“Yes?”

“I beg to ask why only science is being given this leniency to make such a statement. For example, suggestions of intelligent design are immediately met retorts like ‘If God created life, who created God’. Why can’t other schools of thought be given the same flexibility to say that question might be answered in the future?”

Don’t forget to read Shermer’s article. (And it is the 40th anniversary of the moon landings too!) And for the Christian  (more specifically Seventh Day Adventist) side of the argument, check the talk “God, Are you there? Do you care?” by Pr. David Asscherick.

Kudumis and Medulla Oblongatas

08-06-09. Mail. The word “science” refers to a collection of methods and principles used to make sense of the natural world that we inhabit.

In this case, we have a theory. The evidence is lacking.  Let me explain.

One of the major frustrations that my Dad had when I was child was that I never obeyed anyone unless given a proper reason. Every rule had to be backed up by a reason. Why should we do this? Why should we do that? This irritated him the most when I demanded reasons at uncomfortable places, in the church, at the Sunday market or in a social gathering. He used to say, “Trust me on this one. I will give you the reason when we have the time to sit and talk.”

When my Dad gave me a rule and delayed the reason, my mind would start cooking up reasons. And my thoughts would go, “He is asking me to do this probably because of this. And I think it is this because of that. But why this that and not that that? I think it more likely to be that that than this that because of this and that.” Of course, this would go on and on. And then we had the time, I used to ask my Dad about the reasons. Most of the time when the reason was delayed, it  would end up being a “non optional social convention” which irritated me a lot.

In this case, we have a rule. And you have a plausible reason. And absolutely no evidence to back it up. Or in other words, you just have “He is asking me to do this probably because of this” but nothing of “And I think it is this because of that. But why not this that and not that that? I think it more likely to be that that than this that because of this and that.” The principles of the scientific method can be applied within a belief system but it does not seem to be the case here.

This practise of inventing reasons that sound scientific for harmless age old customs seems totally unnecessary to me. Statistics seem to suggest the rate of transmission of AIDS is lesser in societies where circumcision is practised. Should Muslims and Jews pounce upon this study to add scientific legitimacy to their age old practice? In my church, we have a running joke about the P53 tumour suppression protein. Since this protein is produced when cells are at rest and the person is relaxed, it is used by some people to add scientific legitimacy to the rest of sabbath.

I have often pondered on why people do this. For one, it could account for the fact that science has come to hold an important and respectable position is society. Science and its methods have managed to increase comfort and longevity and decrease space and time, things which most people hold in high regard. Therefore, the temptation to apply the label of science to everything is simply too much to resist. Second, it is probably done to get people like me, who question each and everything, to follow these customs. But it beats me on why people fail to understand they can only manage to give these customs an air of science but can never truly stand the test of scientific rigour.

[...]

In your mail, you have mentioned “Indian Science”. Science, by its definition does not take on such adjectives. While its principles and methods were explicitly recognised and started to be codified during the Middle Ages in Europe, they are mostly universal. The thought of “Indian Science” immediately brings to mind Ayurveda, the ancient system of medicine practised the subcontinent. Why is Ayurveda not accepted as main stream science? Simple. Its practices and methods have not been tested against the required rigour of accepted science yet. There is plenty of work going on in this area currently. However, if the methods and practices that fail are not rejected outright, they are susceptible to the same pitfalls as those who use science to justify traditions and customs.

Of course, the adjectives could be used to refer to the group which did a major chunk of work in different periods. Oriental science gave way to Islamic science which flourished until being taken over by the Europeans. If the nineteenth century science was British and the twentieth American, twenty first century science is set to be global. The questions now being addressed by science are simply too large and expensive for one group to work on. Currently limited to a very small piece of the cake, we tend to become nostalgic of the time when we were the leaders. I am not sure whether this serves any useful purpose.

By the way, I have this totally inexplicable idiosyncrasy, duly inculcated by my parents, of using my right hand while giving out or receiving something from others. I keep my purse in my right pant pocket. Though I am quite ambidextrous, I will shift my purse to my left hand once I have taken it out so that I can take out the money with my right hand and hand it over using my right hand. I simply consider this as part of being Tamilian. I will give you a thousand bucks if you can cook up a “scientific” reason for this!

For more on this Hindu tradition of Sikha (kudumi), click here. This mail is addressed to a friend who  theorized (with absolutely no evidence of any sort to back it up) that the practise was instituted to help cushion falls and prevent head injury.

“Utterly Mortified”

I was delighted to read the story about the unpaid phone bill in this article. The part that delighted me most was the writer’s father’s reaction when he was told that he had forgotten to pay a bill.

But far from being amused, he was utterly mortified to learn that he’d made a call for which, through no fault of his own, he hadn’t paid.

He then spent the rest of the day on the line to the New York hotel and Bell Telephone, clocking up a bill for at least 20 times as much as the original call in his efforts to pay for it.

Though he was never a rich man, he didn’t care how much he spent on what he saw as a matter of honour.

I was immediately reminded about  a story that is told in my land, the story of Manunidhi Cholan. Being a just king, he installed a bell in his court so that people who wanted justice could summon him at any time of the day. One day, he found a cow ringing the bell. Further enquiry revealed that it was the same cow whose calf had been run over and killed by a chariot, piloted by his son, the prince. In some renderings, it told that it was an accident while in others, it was a deliberate attempt. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, the king decided that his own son must die in the same way as the calf.

It is hearkening to know that there is still honour in this world.

PR Headaches for Science

The following list shows how coverage about Darwinius masillae evolved on Wikipedia:

(first edit) Scientists announce that Darwinius masillae (radiographs pictured), a 47-million-year-old skeleton of a primate species, is humanity’s missing link.

(edit) Scientists announce that Darwinius masillae (radiographs pictured), a 47-million-year-old fossilized primate species, is humanity’s transitional fossil.

(edit) Scientists announce that Darwinius masillae (radiographs pictured), a 47-million-year-old fossilized primate species, may have significance in understanding human evolution.

(edit) Scientists announce that Darwinius masillae (radiographs pictured), a 47-million-year-old fossil, may represent an important intermediate form in primate evolution.

(edit) Paleontologists announce that Darwinius masillae (radiographs pictured)’, a 47-million-year-old fossil, may represent an important intermediate form in primate evolution.

This could be considered a good representation of the PR problems of science. Quoting from “Ida: Humankind’s Earliest Ancestor! (Not Really)“:

From the beginning, Ida’s unveiling has been a master class in ballyhoo. A week ago, the first breathless press releases began to arrive, portending the presentation of the now famous 47-million-year-old primate fossil from Germany: “MEDIA ALERT,” the notice shouted in all caps. “WORLD-RENOWNED SCIENTISTS REVEAL A REVOLUTIONARY SCIENTIFIC FIND THAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING.”

The press releases were followed by an international press conference at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, the publication of a book, The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor (Little, Brown), an ABC News exclusive and on May 25 a prime-time television special on the History Channel. Of the avalanche of media-related promotion, Jorn Hurum, a Norwegian paleontologist involved in Ida’s discovery, told the New York Times, “Any pop band is doing the same thing.”

This isn’t exactly the stamp of approval most scientists look for, though, and in this case the puffery is especially unfortunate because the actual scientific finding, described in a paper published on May 19 in the online journal PLoS One, really is important.

The Science News Cycle (PhD Comics)

Faith in Science

It was delightful to read “God Talk” (I and II) by Professor Stanley Fish, writing in his syndicated column in the NYT. It was also a pleasure to read “The Atheist’s Dilemma” written by Professor Paul Campos. Though I have not explored these ideas in detail in my blog posts, a few of them reflect what I have written over time.

Why I am not a Christian yet? (October 2008)

One is does belong to a faith or religion by heritage. One does not belong to a faith by  upbringing. Last but definitely not the least, one does not belong to a faith by tradition or by following customs sincerely. According to me, there is one and only one criteria and that criteria is a faith experience.

The thief on the cross had his faith experience during the brief conversation before his death. “And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss” (Luke 23:41) Paul, the man responsible for Christianity spreading to Rome and eventually to the rest of the world had his conversion experience on the road to Damascus. “And he trembling and astonished and said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” (Acts 9:6) Paul, known as Saul before his conversion had quite a dramatic faith experience. The martyrs of Rome, the converts in India and the rest of the world, Augustine, Jerome, Luther, Wesley, Wilberforce, Moody, Hudson, Luther King, Graham… each and every one of them had an intense faith experience. Be it any religion, Hindu, Islam, Buddhist or atheism there can never be faith without a faith experience.

Yet Another Belief System (June 26, 2008)

All these factors have led me to believe that atheism is no different from theism – it is just another belief system. It uses the same tactics that any other belief system uses. And both recruit adherents by cultural, environmental and personal influence.

Wake up folks! Open your eyes and see that your supposed ideological enemies engage in the same tactics as you do. Live with the fact that you will never wake up to a morning to find a world full of theists or atheists. There is a lot more that one can do than engage in this mindless and distasteful bickering!

No Sides. Only Questions. (Feb 19, 2008)

Every opposing argument in a debate can be further deduced to two conflicting premises. These two conflicting premises can be further reduced to other conflicting premises. The problem here is that only one of of these premises can be right or wrong. And the premises used to deduce whether something is right or wrong is again based on other premises. The entire thing is a painful paradox. Human thought is flawed since the parameters used to judge whether something is wrong or right are decided by humans themselves.

For a long time, I have been planning to type out a post titled “Ideas Are, Not People, which would have probably served as an update to the one above. As I wrote about it to a friend recently:

My upcoming post “Ideas Are. Not People” would probably do a better job in explaining the idea which I am attempting to explain here. A couple of weeks back, I did some free writing for about four pages. Those four pages are still lying on my table and the post has not taken shape of any form. The basic concept is that given an evaluation system, it is possible to compare one idea to another idea and positively claim that one is better or worse than the other. The outcome of the comparison purely depends on the evaluation system and the evaluation system itself is subject to change.

The best quote from the article was “Religious thought may be vulnerable on any number of fronts, but it is not vulnerable to the criticism that in contrast to scientific or empirical thought, it rests on mere faith”. This kind of reflects my frustration of people who have the scant understanding of how science works, when I wrote to my friends:

I somehow feel that only the low life masturbators* who pout off some high level fundaes from some high level book that they read are unclear about the assumptions and premises and the masters at the field are very much clear about the constraints that they are working under.

Sometimes I cannot help but wonder whether science itself might take a beating from such an attitude. Sitting at church this week, I was reflecting upon these issues and as a result of it, the following ended up on my FB stream:

Every Saturday, I go to church in the morning and hang out with a bunch of atheist friends in the evening. I am reminded every week that not all people who believe in a god are stupid and not all need one, to be kind and helpful to their fellow human beings.

*the intellectual kind

Dissent and Disloyalty

“Dissent is difficult. It can constitute a real dilemma for the person who disagrees. On one hand, you owe it to your conscience and to your bosses to tell them what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear. Speaking truth to power is actually a form of loyalty. It is the best and at times only way to make sure that government (or any organization) lives up to its potential. No matter how good the advice, however, there will be times when it is resented or rejected. It may be rebuffed on the merits, or because of politics or personalities. Sometimes, smart people just see things differently. It doesn’t matter.

“What should you do when you are ignored or overruled? One option is to continue to challenge the prevailing wisdom or preference. Of course you risk being shut out or ignored. The making of policy in government or any organization has something in common with football. Activity is concentrated near the line of scrimmage. It makes little sense to position yourself in the far end zone if you want to be a factor. Much the same holds for policy. If all the interest and attention is focused on one set of questions, it is usually of little or no value to place yourself totally outside the debate and raise concerns that are judged to be irrelevant or questions that are deemed to be settled.“

“One option that to me was not an option was to leak or to undermine the policy. This is not dissent but disloyalty. Another option was to continue to argue against the war after the decision had been all but made.“

“There is a danger in this. It is easy to rationalize when in reality you’ve become little more than an enabler. One way to avoid this danger is to resign. Leaving is in many ways the most dramatic form of dissent. Putting aside personal reasons (health, finances, family) there are two potentially valid, policy-related reasons for resigning. (Neither of these, by the way, reflects the peculiarly British tradition of resigning when something goes wrong on your watch. Whatever happened may not have been your fault, and even if it was, you may still be able to do more good than harm by staying.)“

“Those looking for hard and fast rules on dissent should be prepared to be disappointed. Sometimes it is better to confront, other times it makes more sense to work around. Sometimes it is better to leave, other times to stay. When it comes to dissent, there is no right answer, much less one that’s right for all situations. That’s what makes it a dilemma.“

The Dilemma of Dissent – Richard N. Haas

Reading of disloyalty and dissent also reminded me of this quote:

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.  – Edward R. Murrow (source)

Nelson, we have problem!

I was reading about distributed numerical adjectives in the latest edition of Wren and Martin, when I found this example: “India expects every man to do his duty”. Chuckling, I checked the previous edition. It was “England expects every man to do his duty”. Funny!